11/03/2009 @ 6:00PM

America The Indispensable

The Berlin Wall collapsed amid a failed faith in communism and exalted hopes for a world free of rivalries and conflicts. Berliners on both sides of the barrier stripped away the concrete slabs that separated their city, lives and two worlds–one free and the other totalitarian. The elation was near universal on seeing the despised Wall tumble–except in the Kremlin and its counterparts within the Soviet Union’s East European satellites or its republics of Central Asia. The Wall’s breaching, in fact, heralded the momentous breakup of the Soviet Union and its “evil empire.” It also portended an era of global tranquility without the Cold War divisions.

Like most major anniversaries, this one–the 20th–bequeaths a moment for reflection and stock-taking on the status of worldwide harmony and America’s international role. Mostly non-violent revolutions and democracy movements did transform Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic States and others from Moscow’s suzerainties to independent countries. East and West Germany reunified and entered as one into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO enlargement eastward also anchored most former satellites within democratic Western Europe, while it offered security against an ever more resurgent Russia bent on neo-czarist imperialism.

The sweeping away of the Soviet edifice in the months that followed the Wall’s destruction brought seismic changes for the United States and the world as a whole, which witnessed expanded trade and increased prosperity. The Wall’s crumbling, however, created a new international landscape of looming threats and widespread uncertainty, all very different from the somewhat predictable Cold War.

For nearly a half-century, the United States stood as a rampart against the Soviet Union’s subversion and expansionism as well as a beacon of hope to its subjects. In the post-Soviet epoch, it became the sole superpower and a bulwark of a different sort. Unlike past ascendant powers, the United States carved out no colonies, nor even spheres of influence in the aftermath of its nemesis’ collapse, despite all the silly talk of an American empire.

Indeed, American taxpayers looked inward, demanded a “peace dividend” from decades of high defense spending, and rediscovered a host of internal ills from poor education in many of the nation’s schools to pervasive drug abuse demanding attention from a Washington seemingly no longer distracted by the Red Army. The impulse for non-involvement beyond our shores runs deep in our history. America’s respite from international problems was brief, however.

Instead of a diminished U.S. role, the post-Wall stretch has witnessed the expanded indispensability of American power and diplomacy. Without the prodigious U.S. economic capacity and military might, regional troublemakers and local conflicts would have gotten out of hand. An American-led coalition turned back Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait. Washington’s intervention stopped the turmoil in Haiti and the horrific atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s, while Western Europe dithered. When Bill Clinton failed to lift a finger to staunch Rwanda’s genocide, hundreds of thousands died in the Central African country, testifying to the need for U.S. engagement.

Desperate regimes no longer subject to the even loose leash of Moscow soon endangered regional peace. North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Libya spread terrorism, embarked on nuclear arms and built longer-range missiles. They fiercely defied the much-ballyhooed global “flatness” of trade, information, and people flows alone to bring reconciliation among warring states, within ethnically split nations, and from extremist Islamic movements.

For all its travails, the Iraq War ousted Saddam Hussein, whose invasions and terrorist promotion kept the Middle East in a state of high insecurity. The U.S.-led invasion of the Persian Gulf nation also convinced Libya to come clean on its manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction. Two rogue adversaries remain for the Barack Obama administration to deal with. It is a sure bet that if Washington fails to halt the nuclear-arming of Iran and North Korea, neither the United Nations nor any non-regional power will.

The two-decade commemoration of the Berlin Wall’s fall also marks another dramatic but less exhilarating world event of the same year. In June 1989, China’s Communist Party crushed the student-orchestrated pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Beijing’s suppression of peaceful dissent ensured the party’s political dominance, its formula for a state-controlled economy, and China’s rise to global power. China’s astounding export engine, thinly veiled military buildup, and aggressive pursuit of its calculated interests cannot but cause unease as America journeys on a more turbulent trajectory. Thus, 20 years ago, we witnessed the eclipse of one global rival and the advent of another possible competitor.

The years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been unkind to the United States, which stood at the pinnacle of its economic and military power when the Berlin Wall fell. Toppling the Taliban regime that hosted the terrorist-mastermind Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and subduing a belligerent Iraq proved costly in blood and treasure. U.S. military power is still matchless in spite of the media’s defeatism about the U.S. losing in the “graveyard of empires.” At present, America’s economic health is under siege.

The Obama administration’s massive deficit spending poses severe risks to American power, which has acted to stabilize global affairs. Our surging government expenditures are propelling federal deficits to almost 98% of the nation’s entire gross domestic product, imperiling productivity and burdening the budget for defense along with non-military expenditures with massive interest payments for our debts.

Unless our government abandons its profligate spending, future Berlin Wall anniversaries will mark a far different American standing than the current one. Arnold Toynbee, the renowned British historian, warned us when he noted that more civilizations perish from suicide than murder.

Thomas H. Henriksen is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and the U.S. Joint Special Operations University. His book American Power After the Berlin Wall appeared in paperback this past August.